Stolen Halo
by Empatheia
Summary: Tykki x Linali x Kanda. She came back from his twisted paradise just a little bit broken.


**A/N: **Written for the January round of flashfics on LiveJournal. Contains crazy!Linali and an unhealthy dose of Stockholm syndrome, so consider yourself warned.

Lyrics and inspiration from Big & Rich's song _Holy Water_.

Enjoy!

**xxxxx**

_**Stolen Halo**_

**xxxxx**

_I used to watch her wear it well_

_Everything would shine wherever she would go_

_But looking at her now you'd never tell_

Kanda could feel Lavi's heart beating through Mugen's blade where it pressed against his throat.

He hadn't meant to draw it, certainly hadn't meant to pin someone he very nearly considered a friend to wall with it, but his body had acted on its own because he was far, far too tired to think first. His anger was still winning over his guilt, however, so the blade would not move just yet. "Leave her alone," he rasped. His voice was dry and harsh from days of not speaking, eating, and hardly drinking at all.

Before, his watchful presence alone had been enough to ward them off, but they were getting desperate now.

"Yuu," whispered Lavi, shocked and frightened by Kanda's instinctual reaction. "What are you doing? Let me _go._"

Kanda struggled with himself, managing at last to calm down enough to pull Mugen away from his throat and replace it with his forearm. "Leave her alone," he repeated wearily. "She doesn't want to see anyone."

Lavi's face twisted with anger. "You don't get to decide who sees her and who doesn't, Yuu. I'm her friend, and she shouldn't be alone right now, damn it."

"She isn't," Kanda hissed into his face, then released him and pushed him away roughly. "I'm sorry for drawing my sword on you. It was unintentional. I wish you no harm. But if you keep this up, you may force me to get violent. I won't say it again: leave her alone. She doesn't want to see anyone."

"God _damn_ it, Yuu!" cried Lavi in frustration. "Just how long are you planning on letting her waste away in there? She might not want to see anyone, but like I said, she shouldn't be alone. It's been days. She has to talk to us sometime."

"To satisfy your curiosity?" Kanda snapped, realizing too late that he was losing control again. "Who are you to decide what she needs? She hasn't lost her mind. She's dealing with what happened in her own way, in her own time, and I for one hardly blame her if she doesn't want to discuss it with all of you just yet. When she's ready, she'll come out, and not bloody well before."

There were tears standing in Lavi's eyes. His hands rose up to clench in the front of Kanda's overcoat and stayed there, trembling. "You're a bastard," he whispered ferociously. "You can't keep us out forever."

"No," Kanda agreed. "I can't. But _she_ can, in a much worse way than this, so I'd be very careful if I were you."

Lavi recoiled as though hit in the chest and staggered back two steps. "She wouldn't," he said, mostly to himself. "She wouldn't do that, not to us. Not to _us_."

"You have no idea what she'd do," replied Kanda coolly. "You don't know what she's been through, or how it's changed her. Don't be so sure your judgement is correct when it comes to her anymore."

"Fine," said Lavi in an anguished whisper. "I'll... leave her to you. Please... take care of her." He bowed low, spine tense and trembling. As he stood up, he slammed his fist into the wall hard enough to split the skin of his knuckles. "_Damn_ it." He trailed away down the dark hall, defeated and wounded again. It was the third time he had tried, and the third time Kanda had turned him back.

Allen, Komui, and Miranda had each tried several times as well, each with their own unique methods of persuasion. They had also failed, and would continue to fail until Kanda received a new request.

Linali had charged him with protecting her silence and solitude. Kanda had never been able to refuse her anything she truly wished for.

Kneeling, he picked up the disturbed tray of food Lavi had brought for her and dropped during their altercation. They all took turns bringing her sustenance, except for Kanda who flatly refused to leave her doorstep for any numbers of threats or enticements. This was where she had asked him to stay. This was where he would stay until she told him he could go.

The door boomed forlornly into the room beyond it when he knocked, a sad echo of something greater. "Linali," he said without preamble. "I have your dinner. Can I come in?"

Silence. But then, she never answered him, or anyone. The silences had their own flavours only Kanda had spent the time to learn how to read. This one was permissive, so he pushed the door open on its rusted hinges and stepped into the grey-lit gloom of Linali's self-imposed prison.

She had been here for five days now, sitting in the narrow wooden chair by the slitted window, staring out sightlessly at the sunbright sea.

Her hair was longer now, hanging dispiritedly about the nape of her neck and her chin. She wore a long white nightgown, dirty about the hems from long hours of aimless pacing across the stone floors. He had managed to talk her into it only after she'd torn the tattered black ballgown they'd found her in from her body in a fit of madness and thrown the scraps of silk and lace out the window. The dress had been a gift from the Noah. It was beautiful, but dark and twisted and wrong... like everything else he had shown her of himself.

That much and that much only Kanda had managed to gather from her unconscious whispers in the dead of night.

When awake, she never spoke. He never tried to make her.

"Here," he said, more out of habit than actually hoping for a response. "I'll come back for the plates in an hour. If you need anything..." He hesitated. He always said this, and she never took him up on it, so what was the point of saying it? But still, it needed to be said. She needed to know, as many times as he could tell her, what he would do for her, how far he would go. "...Anything at all, I'll be outside waiting."

She gave no sign that she had heard him, only swayed across the room like a ghost and took the tray from his hands. Her fingers, where they brushed his, were freezing cold, but did not shake anymore. She sat down by the window again and began to eat thoughtlessly.

For a moment, he lingered by the doorway, just looking at her. Even like this, half-broken and lifeless like a doll, she was still the most beautiful person he'd ever seen. He would wait for her forever if she asked it of him.

The door swung shut behind him, cloaking the hall in evening darkness again. He rearranged his small pad and sat down again to its left, counting down the hour to when he could enter again to take the tray away.

Five days. It had been five days since they had returned from the wilderness of Romania with a half-mad Linali, leaving behind a small, well-appointed castle hidden in the mountains containing thirteen soulless servants and one Noah, all irreversably dead. He was the second Noah to be fascinated with Linali, and had managed to hold onto her considerably longer than the first had. For twenty-seven days she had lived with him in his stronghold, and the Linali who had left it would never be the same as the one who had gone into it.

That was the one thing that the others could not seem to understand about her. The old Linali would absolutely have reached out to her friends first in her time of need, happy for their support and sharing her tears and sorrow with them. They still expected that of her, because they could not understand how the Noah had changed her.

Kanda understood. He saw in her eyes the same darkness that he remembered from his own, years and years ago, before he'd come to the Order. It was the darkness that came from the loss of innocence. The Noah had stolen her halo for himself, though it could be nothing but ashes in his tainted fingers.

This new Linali craved silence and solitude like air and water. It wasn't because she didn't love her friends anymore. It was because she couldn't bear to see the pity on their faces, not yet, not until she'd come to understand within herself what she could stand pity for and what she could not. Once she had relearned her own self, she would be able to share that self with others again. To try before would scatter her to the winds and make reconstructing herself that much more difficult.

Kanda knew. He had been in the place she now stood in before, long ago, and had failed where she was now winning. He had reached out first, begging for answers, and found only pity and misunderstanding because he had no firm ground to stand on within himself.

Because he understood, he would sit here as long as necessary and make sure she had the time she needed to find her feet.

Because he loved her, he would wait.

A soft knock on the door beside him, from the inside. Linali was done with her dinner. He stood to avoid it as it swung open and took the tray from her. She did not meet his eyes, a wan grey spirit in the half-light. "Thank you," she whispered, so quietly he wasn't even sure he had really heard it. He reached out instinctively to catch her, verify, but the door had already cut him off with its closing swing.

"You're welcome," he said to the door, astonished, too pragmatic to hope but also still too much a young man in love _not_ to.

Night came, and faded into the sixth day.

Kanda fell asleep somewhere in the smallest hours of the morning, and was so exhausted that he very nearly failed to wake up when Lavi came to try again. _Nearly_ being the operative word-- he woke up just in time to throw himself bodily in front of the threshold, Mugen in his hand but trapped under himself.

Lavi yelled in frustration and tried to drag him out of the way, half-mad himself by the look in his eyes. "I want to see her, I need to know if she's alright. For the love of God, Yuu, get out of the way!"

"She's fine!" yelled Kanda. "Be quiet, you'll wake her up."

"I don't care!" cried Lavi, crying and tugging ineffectually at a fully awake Kanda. "She's had nearly a week to sleep! We deserve to know--"

A screaming fury bellowed up in Kanda's chest, catching him off guard. Calling on his battle-strength, he threw Lavi across the hallway into the wall, then followed to land atop him and press him into the floor by a hand on his throat. "Don't you fucking talk about what you _deserve!_" Kanda raged. "She's been through something none of you bastards can even imagine. All she wants is a little space to figure things out, but you're so goddamned selfish you can't even give her that. It's all about _you_ and assuaging your _guilt_ because you couldn't _protect_ her. Don't you dare take out your own frustration on her, of all people. Deal with your issues somewhere else."

Lavi stared up at him. "Yuu," he croaked, "I can't breathe."

"Good," snarled Kanda savagely, but relented after a moment and eased up.

"I'm not leaving," gasped Lavi, swallowing hard. His throat would probably bruise. "Not until I see her. You'll have to kill me."

"You're far too convinced that I won't," Kanda muttered. "I won't let you in. She asked me to keep everyone out, so I'm damn well going to. No matter what."

The redhead pushed him off, non-too-gently. "To go that far, anyone would think you love her," said Lavi, staggering to his feet and rubbing his reddened throat and glaring.

Kanda met his glare and swallowed his anger to stand tall and calm. "You seem to be operating under the assumption that I don't."

"I'm operating under the assumption that you don't love _anybody,_" Lavi corrected, crossing his arms obstinately.

Kanda blinked. "You're wrong. I would have thought you, who I will admit know me fairly well, would understand that much at least."

Lavi sagged, letting his arms fall. "Yeah, all right. I only said that because I'm really angry, not because I actually believed it. But we're getting off-topic here. Let me in, Yuu. I'm going to see Linali."

"No."

"_Yuu._"

Kanda wrapped his hand around the reassuring length of Mugen's hilt. "No."

The air between grew taut and approached the snapping point again. This time, he would not give up so easily. There might be blood... but Kanda was used to blood, even his own friends', and would not falter now. Not after he'd protected her this long already.

Green eyes narrowed at him through the gloom.

So focused was he on waiting for Lavi to move, he nearly missed it when the door creaked open behind him. A cool draft swirled out around him. Lavi's eyes widened and passed over his shoulder to something behind him.

Kanda spun to find Linali there, clutching her pale gown around her thin chest and meeting Lavi's astonished gaze with wet eyes. "Enough," she whispered in her voice hoarse from disuse. "Stop it."

He was so astonished that he made no move to stop Lavi when he swept past him to pull Linali into a bone-crushing embrace. "Linali," Lavi cried, weeping already into her lank hair. "Linali!"

"Let me go," she said, and pushed him away.

Lavi stared at her, uncomprehending. Kanda found himself again and leapt to stand between them. He said nothing. This was Linali's to say. Perhaps if they heard it from her own lips, they would understand at last what Kanda had been telling them all along.

"Linali, what--" Lavi started, reaching out past Kanda towards her,

She stepped back and shook her head. "I'm sorry, Lavi. Please. I'm all right, I just need--"

"You can't just lock yourself away like this forever!" Lavi howled, overriding her. "You have to come out. We'll help you, Linali. We love you. _I_ love you. Please, please, just--"

"I can't," she interrupted, soft but impossible to miss. "Not yet. I'm not running away or hiding, Lavi, I promise. Please, just... try and trust me. I'll come back when I'm ready to."

"Linali!" cried Lavi, anguished.

"Thank you for caring so much," she said, and smiled at Lavi. It was a true smile, a Linali smile, an echo of her former self. It was proof that she was not broken like they all believed she was, except for Kanda. It was evidence that she was finding her own path.

She vanished into the room and let the door become her shield from those who loved her too much.

Lavi stared after her as though he could see her through the door, hand still outstretched. It was laughable to think that as a Bookman successor, he should be detached and objective. This person could not be anything near that without killing his soul. He loved twice as hard as anyone else Kanda knew, excepting perhaps Linali herself.

"Do you understand now?" Kanda asked, as gently as he could. "She's fine. She'll come out whenever she can. Let her be."

Tears spilling down his cheeks, Lavi nodded. His footsteps echoed like mournful bells down the hallway, around the corner, until they faded out of earshot.

For the third time that hour, the door opened. Linali's spider-pale hand reached out, caught Kanda's wrist, and dragged him inside. Startled, he went without protest, and allowed her to close the door behind them.

Then she turned on him and met his eyes. Her echoing smile was completely gone, as was something else-- the clarity and sanity in her eyes. This Linali was completely, utterly mad. The moment of lucidity had cost her dearly. "Have you danced with a Noah?" she asked him.

"I'm sorry," he replied, unsure of what ground he was treading on. "I should have stopped him before he disturbed you. I apologize for failing in--"

"Have you danced with a Noah?" she repeated as though she had not heard him, gaze unnerving.

Kanda slowly shook his head. "No. I haven't."

"They are wonderful dancers," she murmured, breaking their gaze to stare sightlessly across the room to her right. "Never a false step. No mistakes, only perfect, sweeping grace." She held out her arms to an invisible someone who was taller than her and smiled up at her created ghost. "It was like dancing with an angel." She stepped once, then again, pirouetting around the room with her arms held high like an unusually lifelike marionette.

"Linali," Kanda said, unable to think of a single more intelligent thing to say than her name.

She danced for a few more moments, then stopped dead in the middle of the room, arms loose and still at her side as though she hadn't moved at all. "Have you ever had dinner with a Noah?"

"No," answered Kanda, not at all sure that she could even hear him.

She smiled at no one. "They are wonderful cooks. Even though they don't need to eat, they do because they love to feel human. Even though it hurt him, he loved to feel human. He made dishes like none I've ever seen before, and laughed with joy when I said they tasted good." She swept a hand slowly across the air at waist-height, as though painting from memory and nothing a laden table.

Kanda's throat closed. It was worse than he had thought, much worse.

She smiled blankly back at him. "Have you ever walked through a garden with a Noah?"

"No," he whispered, clenching his fists.

"He could see beauty where even I wouldn't have noticed it. He found the hidden flowers beneath the bushes, the creatures living in the treeroots, the spiderwebs I would have walked carelessly past, and showed me how beautiful they are, how miraculous. Life astonished him, and through him, me. Have you ever--" She staggered, clutching her chest.

Kanda crossed the room in three steps and caught her, holding her securely against his chest.

Her fingers crept up his arm, his throat, and brushed over his face absently. "Have you ever," she repeated, then continued as she pulled herself up to within inches of his mouth, "been made love to by a Noah?"

His words seized in his throat with horror. He had nothing to say to this, nothing. It shouldn't be him here. It should be Lavi, or Allen, or Miranda, or Komui-- someone who would know what to say to this. But they weren't here. It was just him, and the girl he'd loved for years, who was frighteningly out of her mind.

"Like everything else, he was very good at that too," she said, as though counting something to herself as she pushed away from Kanda. She pressed her fingers to her forehead, then dragged them down as she spoke. "He kissed me here first, then here, then here, and finally here--" Her fingers reached her lips, danced over them. "--so gently. I wanted to say both no and yes, so I said nothing instead and let him touch me." Her hands, terrible, scandalous hands, trailed down to her throat. "He kissed me here next. I asked him teasingly if he were some sort of vampire, and he said yes, some sort, and bit me a little. I wonder if it was terrible of me to enjoy even that."

He couldn't move. Why couldn't he move? All he could seem to do was stand here and watch as she touched herself, told her story in excruciating detail, to the one person who had never asked to hear it.

She dragged her hands up her waist to cup her breasts, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. "He had such clever hands," she reminisced, "and the words he whispered in my ear... I can't remember them, but I remember the fire they built inside me. He was crazy, completely mad, but for some reason he knew me so very well. He knew exactly what to say that would touch me, and worst of all, meant every word. I'm considered a fairly good judge of character, you know," she told Kanda matter-of-factly.

His eyes were burning, but he still couldn't move.

"He didn't ask my permission," she whispered, "but I gave it anyway. He carried me all the way to the bedroom-- _his_ bedroom. There were roses on the bed, petals of every colour, and not a single thorn. I was... disappointed. I had almost hoped for thorns, because I had learned by then how beautiful pain could be when shared with him. He made up for it later, with nails and teeth, after I showed him with my own that I wouldn't mind. He was gentle until I pushed him far enough to break. He could be cruel, but even when he was cruel it was in such a way that brought me pleasure. He tore me open, crawled inside me, and I welcomed him."

"Stop," Kanda cried harshly, voice ragged with effort. "Please, stop. Linali."

"You wanted to know," she said distantly. "I'm telling you. I am explaining him to you so that you can understand me as I am now. There were two sides of him-- one kind and radiant and joyous, and one dark and powerful and cruel, and both of them-- _both of them_-- loved me. He never lied to me about what he was doing. He never pretended to be anything but what he was. He killed the creatures from the treeroots in front of me after showing me how miraculous they were. He trampled the flowers after exclaiming over their beauty. He took every bit as much pleasure in destruction as he did in the creation of life, and my pain made him just as happy as my pleasure did. He was divided, twisted, controversial, but he _knew_ he was and didn't fight it."

Realization dawned on Kanda like a stark and awful sunrise. "You..."

"Yes," Linali interrupted him, in this moment sane and sad again. "I loved him. I couldn't help it. He was an angel, Kanda. A fallen one. But still an angel."

"Why didn't you fight?" Kanda raged, despairing, the one question he'd wanted most to ask all this time.

Linali frowned at him. "You think I didn't? You think I just gave in? You don't know me at all if you think that. I fought, Kanda. I fought as hard as I could. He just won, that's all, because I didn't have the heart to fight any more."

"I didn't mean-- I never thought-- _Linali!_"

"Do you understand yet?" she asked him, sweeping across the bare stone between them to press against him and look into his tortured eyes. "Do you understand why I can't face them yet? They'll never understand, Kanda, you know they won't. To them Noahs are altogether evil and unforgivable. There is no room in their hearts to feel love for them."

Kanda remembered something, and managed to shake his head. "You're wrong. Allen would understand. He had been close to both Rhode and Tykki, and told us himself that he could still see the humanity in them. You know the function of his sword, don't you? He would understand."

"He wouldn't," she said stubbornly. "Even if he could understand seeing Noahs as human, he wouldn't ever have been weak enough to fall in love with one, especially not from such simple manipulations. He would have fought until he died rather than let one win over him. He's done it before."

"He's your friend," Kanda replied simply. "Even if he doesn't understand, he'll forgive you."

Suddenly, shockingly, she pushed him away, face cold with fury in a blink. "Forgive me?" she whispered. "I think you misunderstand. I'm not asking forgiveness. I'm not ashamed."

"Then what...?" he asked, mystified and hurt.

She pressed her hands together over her breast and curled over as if in pain. "I'm _grieving,_" she cried. "I'm in here not just to put myself together again, but say my goodbyes to someone I really cared for. When I'm done, I'll come out and face them, and they can be as disgusted as they like then, but not yet."

"They won't--" Kanda tried weakly, horrified at the change in the girl he loved. She was... bent, twisted, as if Tykki's madness had warped her somehow. "Linali, please, try to remember. These are your friends. You love them."

"Yes?" she agreed, uncomprehending. "Of course I do. What...?"

"Don't you trust them?" he asked, begging her silently to understand what he was trying in his own unpractised way to get across to her.

She stared at him. "I trust them to be themselves," she said finally. "And while I love them for who and what they are, right now I couldn't handle them. Please, Kanda, just... keep them away a bit longer. I promise I'm almost finished."

Kanda felt himself losing, and gave up. He had never been able to resist giving her anything she truly wanted from him, and this was no exception. He reached out and pulled her back into him, stroking her hair and wordlessly telling her all his truths. Then he let her go, left the room, and closed the hateful door again.

As long as she needed, he would give her.

He sat outside her door and silently cut himself to ribbons with his memories of how her voice had sounded telling him her story, how her hands had roamed with remembered joy over herself, how her eyes had smiled at nothing because she could see things he couldn't. He dashed himself apart on the rocks of her awful love.

Nightfall came, and passed, and the seventh day began.

Linali left her room before the castle woke and headed straight for the rooftop garden. Kanda followed at a respectful distance, and simply watched as she stood amongst the flowers and watched the sun rise.

"I think I understand something,"he said once it had cleared the last grasping fingers of the sea.

She didn't answer. He hadn't expected her to.

"It's a terrible thing, to be an angel," he continued, not really sure where the words were coming from but certain that he had to say them. "It means you have to love everyone, and be loved _by_ everyone, and not have a choice in whom you trade hearts with."

Linali buckled, falling to her knees and weeping into the tangle of growing things beneath her, grieving for a love she hadn't had a choice but to give, and then had lost too quickly. "I'm no angel," she gasped raggedly through her hands. "It isn't fair."

"If you're not an angel, then who is?" Kanda asked, a bit of blunt honesty that came from the sweetest place in his soul. He would never have said this in any other circumstance, but right now it seemed... permissible, if still a little strange. He had pictured confessing his love many times before, in many different ways, but this had not numbered among any of those.

She only cried harder, wrapping her arms around herself until she was only a small white bump amid the green, shaking with unseen tears.

He went to her, sitting down unceremoniously next to her and pulling her ungently into his lap.

Her arms circled his waist, accepting his offer. In his arms she let herself cry every tear she had swallowed over the past seven days, let them spill onto the greedy earth until there were none left.

Then she stood up, wiped her eyes, and smiled at him. A real smile, an unbroken, wholehearted, angelic smile that belonged to only her in all the world. "Allen and the others should be getting up soon, right?" she asked brightly, the darkness fading from her eyes even as she spoke. The Noah taint slid off of her shoulders like oil off a swan's feathers until she was white and pure as she had always been.

"Yes," he said, smiled back and reached out his hand.

Linali took it and leaned into his side. "I have lots to tell them."

Kanda left the rooftop garden together with her, the sunlight following them all the way down to where the people who loved her waited.

They had missed her. All of them. There would be more tears before the day was over, but Kanda was getting... somewhat better at dealing with them.

Her hand in his was warm.

**XxxxxxxxX**

**A/N:** Well, there you have it. I am so glad to have this off my chest. Comments and criticisms are welcome, just bear in mind that I'm not actually obligated to agree with or take any advice offered.

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!


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